1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a mobile communications system, and in particular to a method for assigning a communication channel to a mobile terminal according to a carrier sensing scheme.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, to achieve effective use of available frequencies, a cellular communications system has employed such a channel assignment scheme that each cell station can assign one of all available channels to a mobile terminal even at the same frequency when it is determined that the degree of interference is sufficiently low at that frequency. Such a channel assignment scheme is called autonomous decentralized dynamic channel assignment.
In the case of personal communications system such as PHS (Personal Handy-phone System), TDMA/TDD (Time Division Multiple Access/Time Division Duplex) scheme has been employed. It is determined whether no interference occurs in a selected channel and, if no interference, then the selected channel is assigned to the mobile terminal which has requested a communication channel. On the other hand, at the mobile terminal, it is determined whether no interference occurs in the assigned channel and, if no interference, then communication is started at the assigned channel. Such a dynamic channel assignment method is called a carrier-sense channel assignment method. It should be noted that the cell station performs the carrier sensing operation, that is, detects interference level only at the timing of receiving.
An improved carrier sensing channel assignment method has been proposed in Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. 7-212821. According to the improved method, when searching for a communication channel, a cell station performs the carrier sensing operation not only at receiving timing but also at transmitting timing. If the interference levels at receiving and transmitting timing are lower than a predetermined threshold, the communication is started using the assigned channel. In other words, the cell station can detect interference levels in both up-link and down-link channels before starting the communication. Therefore, the probability of call loss is reduced, compared with the above method.
However, even the improved method cannot detect accurate CIR (carrier-interference ratio) at the mobile station because power reduction of radio propagation between the cell station and the mobile terminal is not taken into account. Therefore, to assign a communication channel to each mobile terminal located within the cell using the same channel assignment algorithm, it is necessary to set the interference threshold level of up-link channels to a relatively low level. When the interference threshold level is set low, there may be cases where the cell station erroneously determines that the interference of a selected channel occurs at the mobile terminal though the CIR of the selected channel is sufficiently high at the mobile terminal. In such cases, the number of available channels is reduced, resulting in increased probability of call loss.